


The Long Game

by Kadorienne



Series: Iron and Silver [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arc Reactor, Ergi, Jotunheim, M/M, Odin's Bad Parenting, Odin’s A+ Parenting, Palladium Poisoning, golden apples
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 06:02:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6503779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kadorienne/pseuds/Kadorienne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The arc reactor is slowly killing Tony. The only way Loki can save him is by persuading Odin to grant him a golden apple. But the All-Father’s price is high.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long Game

**Author's Note:**

> This would take place mid-IM2. TDW hasn’t happened, and the canonical solution to Tony’s palladium poisoning also doesn’t happen.
> 
> Thor isn’t presented favorably but he’s barely in the story.

_I will never return to Asgard. I will never kneel before your throne again. I will never again call you Father._

Loki was a liar.

From Hliðskjálf, Odin looked down upon his adopted son coldly. No longer attempting to hide that coldness.

“You have come to ask for an apple for your lover. To save him from the poison his own magical heart is generating.”

On his knees, Loki did not look up. “No, Father. To beg for one.”

“Only because your attempt to steal one failed.”

“You were watching me on Midgard, grieving over my beloved’s illness. You knew I would try to steal one and had Thor ready to stop me.” Loki could not keep the bitterness from his voice.

“There will be a price.”

“I expected that.”

“What are you willing to do?”

Loki had his answer prepared. There was no sense prevaricating, Odin and Heimdall had watched him and they knew he was in no position to negotiate. He would acknowledge openly what they all knew. 

Sometimes tricks were useless.

“So long as I may be with him… anything.”

“The service I will require from you means you must be apart from him at times. You will be able to see and enjoy him, I assure you. My aims are too important to toy with only letting you be with him when he is asleep or any other such prank. If I trapped you into such a vow, I would then have to waste time thwarting your attempts to escape my terms.”

Loki darted a glance up at his foster father. “What service?” He thought he knew, there were many ways in which Odin could make use of his stolen relic, Odin had but to choose among them.

Odin told him the price. All of Loki’s guesses had been wrong. The price was far higher than he had expected.

He did not hesitate for one instant.

“I will do it. Father.”

 

Tony woke on the floor of his workshop with a headache born of too much gin pounding behind his eyes and a god of mischief jostling him with a light touch. 

He groaned. “Let me go back to sleep.”

“This is important, Tony.”

He rolled onto his back and blinked until his lover came into focus, sitting on the floor beside him. He didn’t ask if Loki had found a cure on some other realm. It would hurt Loki to answer if he hadn’t. “How important can it oh hell.”

Loki was holding up a gleaming golden apple.

Now fully awake, Tony sat up despite the pounding in his head. “I thought those were myths.”

“I cannot get them for all Midgard - you have no idea how fiercely they are guarded - so I thought it kindest to let you all believe they did not exist.”

“But you got one for me.”

“Yes.”

He regarded it dubiously. “Side effects?”

“Long life, robust health, accelerated healing….” Despite the gravity of the moment, a tiny gleam appeared in Loki’s eyes. “Boundless male potency….”

“Oh, in that case.” Tony reached for it. It felt like an apple. Didn’t feel magical at all.

He had it almost to his lips when every myth and fairy tale he’d ever read came back to him.

“Wait. What’s the catch?”

Loki sighed. “I hoped you would forget to ask until after you had eaten it.”

“That’s the problem with banging geniuses.”

“It is. I really should break that habit.” Loki gestured to the fruit. “I tried to steal one, but they knew I would. They were ready for me. I failed.”

“And yet here it is.”

Loki dropped his gaze. “I asked… I asked _my father_ to give it to me.”

Tony put the apple down. Loki immediately snatched it off the floor as if it might run away. “I never would’ve wanted to put you in that position, Loki.”

“I made my choice.”

“So what’s the catch?”

Loki still would not meet his eyes. “I will have to return to my father’s service. I will have to be apart from you at least part of the time. But if you still want me, we can still-“

Tony scooted backwards on his rear, away from Loki and his golden apple. “Babe, I am not going to be the one who does this to you. I never expected to live to be even seventy, not with the way I live, I won’t let you-“

Loki smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile. “My father anticipated your reaction. He has spent thousands of years learning how to bend people to his will. Tony….”

“What?” Fresh dread crept into Tony’s heart.

“Even if you refuse the apple, I will still have to pay the price. He would not give it to me unless I agreed to that.”

“I cannot believe what a bastard he is.”

Loki looked away, blinking. “It isn’t what he asks of me that troubles me. It is a trifle if it saves your life. What wounds me is that my own father can use me and my love so ruthlessly."

Tony could relate to that. He took the apple and wolfed it down. Almost immediately the tracings of black on his skin began to fade. He felt better than he had in months, and he didn’t think that was psychosomatic.

“Now tell me what you’ve agreed to.”

Loki did.

Tony almost threw the apple back up.

 

On the plus side, Tony became the first human ever to go to Asgard. Where he stuck to Loki’s side like a burr. If his boyfriend was going to do idiotic things like claim the throne of Jotunheim, he wasn’t going to do it without Tony’s supervision.

That meant Tony was present at the war councils while Loki, Thor, Odin and a bunch of Asgardian generals discussed how they would do it. So Tony got to listen to the guy who’d unleashed an alien army on Manhattan arguing that they should ask the frost giants nicely to make him king.

“After the damage I did to Jotunheim with the Bifrost, they are desperate for relief from their misery. Offer to return their Casket on condition that they accept me as your viceroy and perhaps I can ascend the Jotun throne without bloodshed.”

“Where’s the glory in that?” Thor complained.

“With the Casket restored to them, the Jotuns might then attempt to overthrow Loki and govern themselves again.”

“Yeah, frost giants are tricky that way.” 

“There are ways to prevent this.” Odin’s voice and manner were a little too calm, and Tony, whose lover had been raised by this man, recognized the signs that a boom was about to be lowered. “We will discuss those later. For now, your proposal has merit, Loki. We will try peaceful negotiations first. Loki, during those talks you will probably meet a giantess named Angrboða. She is one of Jotunheim’s highest ranking noblewomen. Try to make a good impression upon her.”

The implications hit Tony and suddenly he felt sicker than the arc reactor had made him.

Loki just looked at his foster father, with the sort of blank expression people got when they were too horrified, too sickened for their faces to express it.

After several seconds, Loki rose and simply walked out of the room. Tony knew that this was a Big Deal, leaving the king’s presence without being dismissed, but Odin at least understood that Loki needed some time to deal with this fresh ordeal.

Tony thought about running after him, but he knew his lover and the man would want to be alone for a bit. Tony could offer an absorbent shoulder later. Right now, he had a request of his own to make, and he thought this might be the right moment.

Before he could speak, the one-eyed bastard gave Tony what was probably intended to seem a comforting smile. “Fear not. You will not lose your lover when he marries Angrboða. Most kings keep mistresses.”

If he had been capable of killing Odin at that moment, Tony would have, never mind what might have followed. But he wasn’t, so he counted to ten, then to fifty, and finally decided to seize the moment. 

“We ergis don’t mind that kind of thing, your majesty.” He knew his sarcasm was not missed by anyone, but he also knew they didn’t care. A mere human was only a barking dog to them, a pet they were letting their Jotun puppet king keep in order to control him. “Your majesty, I have a favor to ask of you.” 

“What favor?”

Tony told him. Odin stared at him in disgust. _All_ the Asgardians were disgusted, Thor most of all. “You would really do such a thing?”

“I’m just a mere human. It’s not that big a step down for me.”

Lip curled, Odin replied, “I suppose not.” Then he smiled a little. “I look forward to seeing my foster son’s surprise.”

“Wait, let me warn him first-" But Odin just proceeded with the spell Tony had requested immediately, and when Loki returned to the room a little later, his newly recovered composure was shattered by finding that his lover now had blue skin and red eyes and a body as cold as ice.

“You’re not the only one who gets to make sacrifices for true love, babe,” Tony said. After that, they were both packed off to Loki’s chambers, as Loki was clearly not going to be useful again that day.

 

“Babe, I’m not letting you go to Ice Planet alone. And you yourself said the temperature there would probably kill a human instantly.”

Loki just looked at him, still in shock.

“And if we’re living on different planets, my magic lessons will have to be interrupted all the time. You know how much I want to learn everything you know.”

His lover managed a tiny nod.

“Loki, tell me honestly. I mean that, I need you to tell me the truth about this. I know what Asgardians think of frost giants. You should’ve seen their faces when I asked Odin to do this to me. Do you find me repulsive now that I’m blue?”

Loki responded by moving to him with lightning swiftness and crushing him close. Loki’s warmth burned Tony now, but he didn’t complain.

 _“Never,”_ Loki whispered fiercely.

“Hmm. Maybe you could demonstrate that? Though maybe we’d better do frottage, I probably feel like a corpse to you and you feel like a furnace to me.”

Loki stepped back and looked him in the eye. As Tony watched, Loki’s fair skin turned blue and those lovely green eyes (Tony was going to miss those) went red.

The sex wasn’t that great as sex went, but for purposes of affirming commitment, it was off the charts.

 

It took ten years for Tony to master the tricks Loki had found to evade the gaze of Heimdall and Hliðskjálf. It might have taken less, except that they had to be careful that Heimdall and Odin didn’t grasp that Loki was teaching Tony these particular things. Or that a mere human might be any threat to them.

When Tony knew he could cast the spell himself, he sought out Jotunheim’s queen, Loki’s wife. He and Angrboða had a civil working relationship. She had married Loki out of duty to her realm and her counsel was useful to him. 

“They can’t hear us now,” Tony assured her once they were alone in one of the icy council chambers. “Loki taught me how to do the spell.”

“And why is he not here?” Angrboða sat down so that the two of them were at eye level. Tony’d been short enough on Earth, he really hadn’t needed to go to a planet full of giants.

“Because he took an oath not to do what I’m going to do. I didn’t take any oath, and even if I had… I’m not as honorable as he is.” Tony allowed himself a half-smirk. “Though given that he’s always ten moves ahead of everyone else, I have to suspect he knew I would do this eventually.”

Angrboða watched his face carefully. “Do what?”

Tony shrugged, casual. “Overthrow Odin All-Father. While tricking my very perceptive boyfriend into not noticing until it’s too late to stop me. Want to help?”


End file.
